THIS IS THE THIRD PART OF A THREE PART BLOG POST
The Elitism of the National-Political Community
Introduction
Hello all, again I hope you are all keeping well. This final post will seek to deal with some of the problems of the argument I have made and integrate the solutions to these problems into the argument as a whole.
Let’s quickly recap – in both 19th Century Italy and the EU, I have argued there is an absence of a sense of national-political community. In this, I mean that people did not primarily identify with goals that were best for the EU or Italy as a whole. Instead people identified with ‘sectional’ interests that had aims clashing with the European Union or Italy. The argument continues, I provide evidence that this has been very bad for both. In fact it has created the problem that has defined the politics of both unions – these being deep-rooted structural problems – namely regional inequality – and an inability to deal with crises that affect the unions as a whole.
The Characteristics of Elitism
Now, there should be an objection from any of you reading the previous post closely – that there is some form of national community, surely? If not, then what were those leading parliamentarians in Italy who failed in their mission trying to achieve? What about those people in the European Commission who do act in Europe’s interest? Are they not acting within the general interest of the whole community? The answer is yes – and you are definitely right. I do not think this poses an existential problem for my argument, however. In fact, this again seems to be an interesting parallel between Italy and the European Union – the presence of an elitist and broadly unpopular ideology that acts in the interests of the national political community. In both cases, these elites promote the good of the national community - and achieve some results - but by doing so create an institutional framework that is not able to adequately face up to structural problems and crises across the political community to which they belong.
Let’s deal with Europe first this time. In Europe, there have always been those who share this elitist conception both as leaders of member states and members of the European establishment – i.e. in institutions like the Commission and Parliament. They have been the driving force of European integration. Think Jacques Delors, that European Commission head who promoted greater European integration through the Single Market (1987) and the Maastrict Treaty (1993). Think Emmanuel Macron – who’s tendency for Europhilia has made him the poster boy for tighter European integration, but who has been unable to garner sufficient support to make this dream a reality. Think Jean Monnet, in effect the original architect of the European project back in the 1950s. This elite is idealist, usually Franco-German – or from the Benelux – and tends to recognise long-term goals and deep structural reform as key. Their optimism and false sense of the self-evident nature of the European political community is key to understanding how Europe got to the position it is today and why it is having trouble going further. Similarly, the Risorgiomento had an elite that promoted unification largely against the wishes of the Italians. We have already seen how the vast majority of Italians did not see ‘Italy’ as their primary political community. But, Italy was united, and united – to at least some extent – under an ideological banner. Garibaldi’s motivations in the conquest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, at the very least, explicitly referenced the notion and nation of ‘Italy’. Cavour realised it would be politically impossible for him to stop Garibaldi’s march through Italy without borrowing its clothes – and therefore declaring loyalty to something called ‘Italy’. It is hard, therefore, to claim that the notion of an Italian political community was not essential to unification. The radical nationalists were then to an extent co-opted into the state apparatus post-Risorgiomento, meaning that the government of Italy saw worth in the national unit of ‘Italy’. For example, in one of the most telling examples of this, Francesco Crispi – the authoritarian Prime Minister who was remarkable in his physiognomic resemblance to Bismarck – was a former member of Garibaldi’s Thousand, and had spent many years in political exile for his nationalist views pre-1859.
Clearly, then, it would just be wrong to claim there was no sense of national political community across either the EU or Italy. Instead, it is the limited nature of the identification with this community beyond an optimistic and moralising elite that created those dire consequences spelled out in the last blog post. These consequences were therefore caused by the combination of the overzealous hope of the elites and the lacklustre reality. Without either of these, Italy and Europe would have been far better at dealing with its problems. My prescription is therefore to close the gap between high hopes and dire reality in the EU.
Further Structural Difficulties
One of the worst things about this lack of the lack of a national political community is its tendency to be self-reinforcing. One of my key arguments throughout is that in the EU and 19th Century Italy structural change is hard. If it was downright impossible to initiate minor reforms on the South of Italy imagine how hard it was to fix the system which enabled political agents to have this sort of influence in the first place. In Italy, this manifested itself through widespread corruption. Due to a lack of a sense of political loyalty to the national community, those who represented localities through democratic institutions created powerful nexuses of power that upheld the status quo. Southern landowners saw little benefit in structural reforms – because the impetus to care about the overall benefit of the national community was missing. As they had a hand in both government – as members of parliament – and the local administration and enforcement of reforms - as local grandees - they were able to largely hinder change.
Similarly, reform in Europe has constantly been blocked by those who benefit from the lucrative status quo. Angela Merkel’s reluctance to assent to Emmanuel Macron’s reforms is the classic example of this. After Macron’s election victory, there was a French push for a fundamental integrative shift in the European project – however, the Merkel stalled politically out of a sense that German problems should be her priority. Merkel explicitly sees the German national-sectional interest to come before the European interest, and she felt as if further integration would not sit well with already sceptical voters who think that Southern Europe is a leach off the wealth of the north.
In Europe, the way in which power is structured also makes this even harder. As national leaders are at a basic level accountable to national electorates it is hard for member states of the European Union to not put national-sectional interests first. This varies, of course, and part of the reason the French President currently can be so pro-European is an absence of susceptibility to electoral pressure. For the president, the terms are 5 years long, and the executive retains extensive powers no matter what. Merkel, and the CDU, on the other hand seem to have a greater degree of electoral pressure to conform to popular expectations about putting Germany first. It is therefore hard for Merkel to consent to being at the forefront of fundamental integrative European reform. To do so would be hugely unpopular and potentially counter-productive as other parties like the AfD hoover up votes that would normally go to the CDU. To summarise, member states have power, and national member states are structured in such a way as to ensure they react to national priorities in the EU. Therefore, there is greater impetus to act in the national-sectional interests rather than the general good of Europe as a whole.
Educative and Performative Political Action in Italy
Now, I believe it is important to look at the final consequence of the absence of national political community in Italy, and what this consequence’s complex relationship with Europe is. In Italy, the absence of a national political community fostered an elitist commitment to educate the masses. The elites recognised the fact that there was no widespread conception of the importance of being ‘Italian’. They therefore went out of their way to ‘make Italians’ for a new Italy.
This resulted in that tragicomic trope of Italian history – the many, many, many unsuccessful attempts to create a convincing Italian historical narrative through action. The result was attempts – first by the nationalist revolutionaries, then the post-Risorgiomento liberals and finally by the Fascists - to artificially create this commonality through performative political action. Mazzini, with an undying faith in God’s role in politics, was the pioneer of this form of politics. Mazzini emphasised the need for struggle and suffering as duties towards forming nations that were made by God – and when Mazzini said made by God, he meant that. Mazzini thought practically the core feature of existence was that God made ‘peoples’. To unite these was not just a Christian mission – it was the Christian mission. As a result, he saw the education of Italian people into being Italian as core – and to do so, the more powerful the message the better. He saw sacrifice of human blood for the cause of Italy as this powerful message – it would teach the people of Italy the value of sacrifice for the nation in the name of God. As a result, under the command of Mazzini, hopeless countless ‘revolutions’ occurred throughout the 1830s until his death either under his direct command – as in the case of the 1833 Young Italian rising in Sardinia-Piedmont – or heavily influenced by his message – as with the case of the Pisacane expedition in Sapri. Needless to say, that they were largely initially ineffective – and Italy was not united in the way Mazzini intended to be in widespread insurrection, instead through a combination of Piedmontese conquest and Garibaldian exploits.
The liberal post-Risorgiomento state also saw the essential need to foster this same sort of loyalty to the national community. In this case, it saw war as the best way of engendering national loyalty. A nice, quick successful and glorious war is something that would be easy to unite around went the logic. Unfortunately, this made big assumptions about the competence of Italy, and high, unrealistic expectations of success in war – expectations that would make real successes feel insufficient. The war of 1866 against Austria was the first attempt at this - and was an especially big humiliation. High expectations about victory and poor leadership in 1866 created a mood of despair and embarrassment following the military and naval defeats of Custoza and Lissa. The extent to which Italy still relied on others was lain bare by the fact that Veneto was given to the Italians anyway (although, again embarrassingly, the Austrians were only willing to give the region to France, which in turn gave it to Italy). A long period of political and fiscal crisis followed due to innumerable financial, domestic and political costs of unification. The next opportunity to create national unity and myth through war, therefore, fell to Francesco Crispi in the 1890s, who again, failed. This time, embarrassingly, to Ethiopia – which at this time was barely a feudal state. At the battle of Adwa, an Italian Army of 17,000 men was routed by the army of the Ethiopian Menelik.
The Fascist state followed in the footsteps of the Liberal one. Proto-fascists like D’Annunzio were involved in the performative capture and ruling of the city of Fiume following the so-called ‘mutilated peace’ at Versailles. Mussolini was the master of performative political action. He – with the aid of a propaganda machine and complete dominance of state machinery – can in many respects be considered the heir of Mazzini in his commitment to the ideal. He was largely successful in many regards – his successful invasion of Ethiopia, followed by the exit from the League of Nations created a sense of political community, creating a narrative of struggle to eventual painful success. This all sat quite well with the Mazzinian narrative of the struggle in the Risorgiomento. No doubt Mussolini was also aided by the increase in the prosperity and literacy of the Italian population at large – with the result being that increasing numbers were well-connected to the elitist tropes of nationhood. Although problems remained – namely the continued presence of particularisms and dual loyalties - the seemingly intractable problem of the lack of national community had been through time, patience and frustration painfully chipped away at until it was no longer existential. This is not to say this didn’t come at a cost – Fascism also was so flexible and meaningless that it easily was able to integrate Nazi racialism, ultimately meaning that Italy became embroiled in the Holocaust. Similarly, there are significant numbers of other morally repugnant things about the Fascist regime in Italy, but I do not have time to discuss them in any great detail here.
What about Europe?
So, am I going to say that Europe is going to become a fascist state? Or that those Berlaymont Bureaucrats have a hidden knack for performative politics? No, unfortunately for the Mark Francois’s of the world, I will be not drawing that conclusion. However, the liberal elitists who share a conception of European political community do have an essentially educative tendency similar to the one of the Italians. With that same unbridled enthusiasm and optimism that got them into the mess of the adoption of a joint monetary union without some similar fiscal union they believe that time and logic is on their side. The tendency to talk down to people and ask them the question ‘Why don’t you believe what I do?’, with the obvious implication that these individuals must be stupid is something shared by the Risorgiomento radicals. I am not questioning the validity of the concept that some sort of essential myth and therefore artificially created piece of commonality for European unity is needed here. However, if this is something that we do want, we ultimately must recognise the task both as it is, and the limitations of our ambitions.
It is not the case that we can have a unitary state in Europe that people accept – it is neither realistic nor feasible given the status quo. It is however clear that we can make incremental and sensible reforms while also focusing on creating a national political community that has essential to it aspects of commonality. If we do not do this, the European project will fail. Cracks will appear, these cracks will grow wider with inaction and complacency and the European project will fall out of political consciousness like a bad and unfortunate dream.
Sensible action, learning from past human mistakes is my answer – something that history gives us a golden opportunity to do,
Yours,
WFF
Bibliography:
C. Duggan - A Concise History of Italy
C. Duggan - The Force of Destiny
L. Riall - Risorgiomento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State
B. Anderson - Imagined Communities
L. Reeder - Italy in the Modern World